Andy Capper's new releases review

Poppy & The Jezebels - Rhubarb & Custard (Mute Irregulars)

Four Birmingham teenagers make a song that sounds like a demo for the first Bananarama album, but if Lawrence from Felt/Denim was in the studio with them.

It sounds innocent without being dumb. It's fun but it's not goofy. It's cute without making you want to throw up. It's like something from the golden days of Smash Hits, when Madonna would be on the cover one week and Jesus And Mary Chain the next. Despite all these references to old things, Poppy & The Jezebels have the freshest girl-group pop sound I've heard since the days when Destiny's Child were still good.

Miley Cyrus - Climb (Polydor)

I don't have kids, so this is the first time I've realised Hannah Montana is a real person who is actually somebody called Miley Cyrus and is the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus.

I always thought she was a cartoon from one of those crap Disney musicals about how brilliant school is. It would be far preferable to being a living, breathing precocious whelp with a song Shania Twain would leave off her record because it sounds too menopausey.

Girls Aloud - Untouchable (Fascination)

Their 21st single has a brilliant chorus with a huge trance keyboard line behind it, which is probably just in time for the Ibiza summer season. It's also got the obligatory "boring bit where all of them have a go at singing the verse", but that's OK. I'm imagining listening to this while tripping really hard on strong MDMA, topless, while dancing on a podium at Amnesia. It makes me want to be one of those people who stays in Ibiza for months after the summer, cleaning toilets for drug money so they can pay to dance in the sea until 7.15am every day. They come back to England a year later and everybody they know has either left town or got married.

Alessi's Ark - Over The Hill (Virgin)

Lovers of whimsical breathy girls who sing about talking to hedgehogs at the bottom of the garden should take this to their hearts. It pushes the cute boat out into the Ocean Of Twee with such force it causes a tidal wave of fairy cakes to engulf the Lost City Of Peppermint, killing 354 candy mice, leaving untold number of unicorns and baby bunnies seriously injured. (The baby bunnies are wearing cardigans and playing London's Burning on the recorder.)

Pink - Please Don't Leave Me (BMG)

I wish Pink could ask me not to leave her because, even if she offered me a billion pounds, I would ask her to go. It would feel good, slamming the door in her face and having the butlers remove her from the grounds while she jumped up and down screaming. She would be chased and bitten by the guard dogs while trite modern American soft rock played in the background. The sound would slowly fade over three minutes and then ... a golden silence.